By Jessica Ye (Jessica Yap)
Remember dressing up dolls and deciding exactly what they should wear?
Fashion has been doing much the same thing for centuries.
This September, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York turns that childhood pastime into the subject of Doll Dressing, an exhibition bringing together more than 170 dolls, clothes, accessories, artworks and videos to look at how the miniature figures have influenced fashion from the 18th century to today.
And there is much more to it than Barbie.
Curated by Dr Colleen Hill, senior curator of costume at MFIT, the exhibition looks at dolls not just as toys but as miniature fashion models, design references and even prototypes. Long before social media made runway images instantly accessible, dolls were already being used to show people what was fashionable.
An 18th-century doll on loan from Colonial Williamsburg, for instance, was used to circulate high-end fashion among dressmakers, who could study the miniature garments before translating them into full-size clothes.
That idea of fashion in miniature gets even more interesting when designers start playing with the scale themselves.
Martin Margiela famously enlarged doll clothes and accessories for his Fall 1994 collection, making them 5.2 times their original size. The exaggerated proportions brought attention to the rough stitches, imperfect construction and strange fits that would normally disappear on a tiny doll.
Then there is Jeremy Scott’s Spring 2017 Moschino collection, where paper-doll tabs appeared around garments as though the clothes had been cut straight from a sheet of paper.
It looked playful, but there was a point behind it. The collection poked fun at the way fashion is consumed through screens, where clothes are increasingly experienced as images rather than objects.
That mix of play and commentary runs through Doll Dressing.
The exhibition begins by asking what actually makes a fashion doll, with examples including a 1970s Daisy doll dressed by Mary Quant and the original Black Barbie from 1980, designed by Kitty Black Perkins. The latter is particularly significant in a story about fashion and representation, showing how dolls have also reflected changing ideas about who gets to see themselves represented in style.
From there, the exhibition moves through six sections, each taking the relationship between dolls and fashion somewhere different.
“Fashion Doll Foundations” goes back to the historical role of dolls as carriers of fashion, while “Modes in Miniature” looks at designers who have deliberately worked on a smaller scale. Pieces by Emily Adams Bode Aujla, Anna Sui and Jason Wu are paired with miniature versions, turning the idea of the fashion collection into something you could almost hold in your hands.
Then comes “Playing with Dolls”, which is where things get particularly fun. Alongside Margiela and Scott, the section considers childhood, nostalgia and the strange relationship between fashion and proportion.
White synthetic straw “Doll” hat, circa 1938 | Image: MFIT
“The Dollhouse” moves that fascination from the wardrobe into the home. Lirika Matoshi’s 2024 Apartment Coat, covered in appliquéd rooms, brings the world of dollhouses onto the body. It is part garment, part miniature interior and a very literal example of how fashion can become a space of fantasy.
Then there are the dolls that grow up.
“All Dolled Up” looks at the idea of the “living doll”, from the flapper and dolly bird to the 21st-century Lolita. Twiggy appears here too, represented by a contemporary replica of the celebrity mannequin wearing a dress from her own Twiggy London Girl label.
The section is a reminder that looking like a doll has never meant just looking pretty. These exaggerated identities have been used to flirt with ideas of rebellion, femininity and self-definition.
And naturally, things get darker before the exhibition ends.
“Broken Dolls” looks at the less polished side of doll imagery, from the Kinderwhore aesthetic of the 1990s to horror-inspired dolls. Among the objects is a Monster High doll wearing a miniature version of a 2017 runway look by Virgil Abloh’s Off-White.
It is an unexpected way to finish an exhibition about dolls, but perhaps the most revealing one. Dolls do not always have to be perfect. They can be strange, damaged, exaggerated or even frightening, and fashion has often used those qualities to question what we consider beautiful in the first place.
That is perhaps what makes Doll Dressing more interesting than a straightforward trip down Barbie memory lane.
The exhibition shows that dolls have never simply copied fashion. Sometimes they helped spread it. Sometimes designers copied them. Sometimes they became a way of questioning fashion itself.
And sometimes, they were simply the first models we ever dressed.
Doll Dressing runs from September 16, 2026 to January 3, 2027 at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Admission to the museum is free. A Doll Dressing symposium will also take place on November 13, 2026, while the accompanying book, published by Rizzoli, arrives in September.
